White House officials are raising their expectations that the government will partially shut down on Friday as lawmakers scramble to find votes for a short-term spending deal that will fund the government past midnight, budget director Mick Mulvaney said.

"We were operating under a sort of 30 percent [likelihood of a] shutdown up until yesterday, I think it's ratcheted up now," Mulvaney told reporters at the White House on Friday.

"We've had our meeting just about a half an hour ago, a teleconference with a bunch of agencies to tell them to start to implement their lapse plan, the next step in preparing for a lapse in funding, that's what we call a shutdown, the formal name of it.

Mulvaney said the White House now sees the chances of the government shutting down as "50-50."

The White House and Republicans have pushed to negotiate the immigration issue separately, as Congress has until March to extend protections for these immigrants who were covered by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.